McDermott pleased despite defeat

Reading manager Brian McDermott was extremely pleased with his players efforts, in their 3-1 defeat to Tottenham on Tuesday.

The Royals took on early lead against Andre Villas-Boas' side at White Hart Lane, as Pavel Pogrebnyak headed home after they hit the bar. Spurs soon equalised as Michael Dawson attacked Gylfi Sigurdsson's corner and went in front thanks to a back-post header from Emmanuel Adebayor. Clint Dempsey sealed the victory with ten minutes to go.

Speaking to the Official Reading FC website, McDermott said: 'Our fans clapped the players off at full time and that tells you something. I'm never happy when we don't win but we showed a great spirit today. When we went in front, I thought if we could get in at half time 1-0 we had a chance. It was a great free kick from Hartey and Pavel headed in.'

'We got done on a set play and the second one was a good goal, Lennon and Adebayor did well. Then at 2-1 we had opportunities, I've seen them again and we were very unfortunate not to score from any of them. When you come here, playing against this team, you know they're going to have a lot of possession with what they've got going forward.'

Despite letting Spurs have way too many shots in the game, the heart we showed during that second period was admirable from our point of view. Not many teams will create more than four chances against Spurs at White Hart Lane, so we can just rule this game out, as no one really expected us to get anything from this game. Onwards and upwards!

Use your social login to comment on front page articles. Login using you Facebook, Twitter, Google or LinkedIn accounts and have your say!

Your Comments (oldest first)

I like McDermott but he couldn't say anything else could he? Mr Man United (Webb) gave a very dubious free kick which you took full advantage of. You played 5 and sometimes 6 in midfield that restricted Spurs to long shots until half time. That also made McAnuff (?) play too far back to protect your left back against Lennon. The hole game was played at practice match speed and we strolled it. I really hope you survive but you'll have to show more intent than you did yesterday.

I agree, we drop way too deep sometimes. As much as this denies team's space and frustrates them, it means we have no attacking outlet. There is only a certain amount of time you can do this until you are punished.

Cookie Policy
At Vital Football, we along with most other modern websites use small files called 'cookies' to create the most secure, effective and functional website possible for our users. Without these files our business model, based on advertising, breaks down and we would be unable to continue to provide the services that you are here to utilise. By continuing to use this website after seeing this message, you consent to our use of cookies on this device unless you have disabled them. For full details please read our Cookie Policy which can be found here. However, if you would like to disable cookies on this device, please view our Cookie Policy which contains an opt-out tool for disabling advertising cookies. Please also visit our information pages on 'How to manage cookies' if you would also like to block all other types of cookies. Please be aware that parts of this site will not function correctly if you disable cookies.